Don't expect miracles

I agree with everyone else in that this set has the best picture of any LCD TV I viewed. That said, it can only produce as good a picture as the signal it gets. Most current ATSC signals suffer from bandwidth limitations which cause pixelation of the image during moderate/fast motion sequences or scene changes. This is not a limitation in the set, but it can be disappointing. When broadcasters finally give up their NTSC broadcasts and dedicate more bandwidth to HDTV, this will hopefully improve.

The clarity of this set also makes it easier to see disappointing artifacts in analog signals. For example, on my old CRT TV with an S-Video input from my satellite receiver, I never saw anything but what I thought was a great picture. With this new LCD TV, I can easily spot differences in signal quality from channel to channel, which I assume is due to quality differences in the uplinks to the satellite service.

So, don't expect a perfect picture (although ATSC broadcasts at 1080i are still excellent) unless you've got an HD DVD player.

I do have a couple minor disappointments about the set itself. One is that the default picture settings are too dark at the dark end and too bright at the light end. However, these settings are easily adjusted by the great picture settings available. The other disappointment is that custom picture settings cannot be saved separately for both the antenna and analog cable/satellite inputs.

I also want to relay the best advice I got in selecting a screen size. If for the next few years you are going to watch a combination of digital and analog sources, don't get a screen so big you'll see all the defects in the analog sources and be disappointed for years until all sources are digital. I found the following screen sizes to be right on for 1080 resolution:

All analog: Viewing distance = 7 x screen height
Mix A and D: Viewing distance = 5 x screen height
All digital: Viewing distance = 3 x screen height